WOMAN.BY EDWARD D. MANSFIELD |
| THERE is a beautiful parallelism between the condition of woman in her domestic life, and the character of a nation. She is the mother of men, and the former of their minds, at that early age when every word distils upon the heart, like the dew-drop upon the tender grass. There is to that young mind no truth or falsehood in the world but that whose words words flow from the mother's lips. There is no beauty in character, nor glory in action, which has not been concentrated by her praise. There is to that climbing child no path where the mother's feet has not trod. Her mind is to his the supernatural pillar of fire which illumines his mid-night ignorance, and the silvery cloud which at mid-day precedes him in every highway to the world. And, even when science has conducted her pupil through the highest walls of knowledge; or when art has polished him into the accomplished citizen; or when power has dignified him with the memorials of office, she still lives in his soul, which she has imbued from her heart's |
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"pictured urn, With thoughts that breathe, and words that burn." |
| It is thus that society is formed in its social and moral ideas, and thus that its condition must ever present, on a large scale, a parallelism in its moral life, to the condition of woman. It is not matter of fancy, but a great social fact. |
Godey's Lady's Book
May, 1852.